Extraction of intima- media layer of arteria- carotis and evaluation of its thickness using active contour approach

Abstract

A non invasive B-mode ultrasonic imaging of arteria- carotis is used for extracting the Intima -media layer and evaluation of its thickness using contour approach has been proposed in this paper. Analysis of carotid artery wall plays a major role in clinical practices. An accurate segmentation of the different layers of the common carotid artery (CCA) is needed since the intima-media thickness is a risk index for some of the most severe acute cerebrovascular and cardiovascular pathologies. A wide variety of algorithms for the carotid artery wall segmentation have been proposed, but they require a certain degree of manual adjustments in fixing the markers in the artery walls. This paper proposes a novel approach to segment the carotid artery wall without manual interruption. It has been designed for the extraction of intima and media layers of the carotid wall for normal and abnormal subjects. A contour approach can be successfully used in evaluating the intima-media thickness (IMT). The magnitudes of the IMT values have been used to explore the rate of prediction of blockage existing in the cerebrovascular and cardiovascular pathologies and also hypertension and atherosclerosis. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated on a set of images.